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“(Asked about his stance on pornography, in response to perceived endorsement of Hustler, who had tricked Chomsky into giving an interview for the magazine.)
Pornography is humiliation and degradation of women. It’s a disgraceful activity. I don’t want to be associated with it. Just take a look at the pictures. I mean, women are degraded as vulgar sex objects. That’s not what human beings are. I don’t even see anything to discuss.
(Interviewer: But didn’t performers choose to do the job and get paid?)
The fact that people agree to it and are paid, is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favour of sweatshops in China, where women are locked into a factory and work fifteen hours a day, and then the factory burns down and they all die. Yeah, they were paid and they consented, but it doesn’t make me in favour of it, so that argument we can’t even talk about.
As for the fact that it’s some people’s erotica, well you know that’s their problem, doesn’t mean I have to contribute to it. If they get enjoyment out of humiliation of women, they have a problem, but it’s nothing I want to contribute to.
(Interviewer: How should we improve the production conditions of pornography?)
By eliminating degradation of women, that would improve it. Just like child abuse, you don’t want to make it better child abuse, you want to stop child abuse.
Suppose there’s a starving child in the slums, and you say “well, I’ll give you food if you’ll let me abuse you.” Suppose—well, there happen to be laws against child abuse, fortunately—but suppose someone were to give you an argument. Well, you know, after all a child’s starving otherwise, so you’re taking away their chance to get some food if you ban abuse. I mean, is that an argument?
The answer to that is stop the conditions in which the child is starving, and the same is true here. Eliminate the conditions in which women can’t get decent jobs, not permit abusive and destructive behaviour.”
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Amnesty International should look into that whole eliminating the conditions in which women can’t get decent jobs, not permitting abusing and destructive behaviour idea.
How does one win an argument with another that doesn’t accept the basic tenets of reality. Recently over at Violet Wisp’s blog the religious element was once again taking the moral low road on abortion and left with trying to explain how their religion was explicitly “pro-life” when in fact their magic book is, in fact, pro-abortion. You can go over and read the thread yourself here, but I’ve screen captured the parts that I want to talk about.
Observe what is going on here. JZ is attempting to establish a coherence in what christian dogma demands and what its believers actually say. This of course won’t be pretty.
The hell? Just answer the damn the question. I mean this should be a slam dunk for a true believer – the bible is god’s word – this should be elementary stuff.
Oh, I see. Rather than admit your book is wrong, you obfuscate. Why all the smoke and mirrors? Here is my theory:once you admit one tenet of your religion is invalid the rest of the contradictory bullshit that you conveniently look past, will hit you squarely in the brainpan. Religious world view destroyed – welcome to atheism.
But it looks like CS has chosen Plan B: Evasively confabulate until you have to flounce from the thread because no one is accepting the rhetorical squirrel-farts that serve as the basis for your defence of your contradictory and indefensible arguments.
I think we can let John Stewart summarize the results….
Darkmatter2525, once again, is featured on today’s disservice. Enjoy.
This excerpt for the article ‘Liberals and the New McCarthyism‘
” And I blame the groundlessness of postmodernism, with its assertion that meaning is not inherent in anything, that there are no truths, and that each person’s perception of reality is equally valid. As well as destroying class consciousness—which is one reason modern blacklisting is often based on claims of how some speaker will supposedly hurt or trigger the individual, rather than emphasizing harm or gain to society as a whole—postmodernism has led to much of the insanity we’re discussing.
As philosopher Daniel Dennett commented, “Postmodernism, the school of ‘thought’ that proclaimed ‘There are no truths, only interpretations’ has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for ‘conversations’ in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.” And if all you’ve got is rhetoric, that is, “interpretations” and “assertions,” as opposed to, say, factual evidence, then the only way, or at least the most tempting way, to conclusively win an argument is through rhetorical manipulations. If you can’t say, “Your opinion is wrong, and here are facts showing your opinion is wrong,” you’re pretty much stuck with, “Your opinion is oppressing me, triggering me, hurting my feelings.” And that’s precisely what we see. And of course we can’t argue back, in part because nobody can verify or falsify your feelings, and in part because by then we’ve already been deplatformed.”
Some food for thought.
Hayden is often referred to as the Father of Classical music. Listen and find out why. :)
All three movements of this work are written in sonata form, unlike the second concerto, where rondo form is used in the second and third movements. This concerto is more related to Haydn’s violin concerti than its follower, holding very close resemblance to the Violin Concerto no. 3 in A major, such as the first movement’s etched rhythms, and flowing second themes, a peaceful slow movement, and a brisk finale. Both concerti were composed in the same period of time.
Entrance of solo cello
After the orchestral exposition of the first movement, the solo instrument plays the opening theme with full chords that use all four strings. Virtuosity is developed further in the use of rapidly repeating notes, the very high range, and quick contrasts of register. This movement is dominated by a single theme, although the theme itself includes several motives that Haydn develops separately. Near the end, a cadenza is played.
In the slow movement (scored without winds), the cello enters dramatically on a long note, played while the orchestral strings relaunch the opening theme. Two measures later the cello goes on to imitate this melody. Haydn was fond of this gesture: several times in the movement the cello enters on a sustained pitch. This movement, like the first, calls for a cadenza toward the end.
The finale also has the cello enter on a long note, after an extended orchestral introduction. This spirited finale, written in sonata allegro form, represented another chance for Haydn to show what he could do in spinning out a single theme into a series of short motives and a large variety of rapidly changing moods. The virtuosity of the solo instrument is exploited in this movement, especially in passages where the cello alternates rapidly from low to high, so that it seems to be two instruments playing in counterpoint. Haydn uses the sustained-note entrance several times, the final one on a very high, penetrating G.
This sorta stuff is what makes or breaks relationships. Have you ever caught yourself doing the actions they just mentioned in a video like this? I just did.
Let me tell you a story, but first watch the video .
Pretty high on the useful emotional educational chart if you ask me. But back to my promised anecdote.
This happened not even a week ago – I do my blogging on the weekends, and schedule a week’s worth of posts in a batch – so really this happened today, but in the past when you, gentle readers, get to partake.
My weekend job starts at 7:30am every Saturday and Sunday. When I’m feeling particularly responsible I like to get to bed before 11pm, as we all know getting enough sleep sets one up for at least a semi-productive day. Of course, this Friday was not the case. For some reason the allure of watching an poorly animated Batman featurette trumped my getting to bed before pumpkin time. So, I’m shortening the length of my sleep on the front end – why? – because I’m an idiot some evenings.
My partner, who goes by The Intransigent One (TIO) here on DWR does not work on the weekends and thus can sleep in. All is well and good, except that *this* morning for whatever reason – dust, allergies, the moon, etc.- she begins snoring at about 5:50am. Now, gentle readers, it is almost always a question of magnitude when it comes to the disruption caused by one partner or the other when they bust out the fortissimo eupneic overtures.
It was kinda like this:
Anyhow. I was upset because my morning just got a lot earlier and now in hindsight I realize that I had passed squarely into the Blame zone as indicated in the Dr.Brown video. Was I thinking about the sort of night TIO was having? Nope, nope, nope. I was mad, and turned off the empathy for what may have caused her snoring and focused on blaming her regardless of the context of the situation.
I was mad. I left the lights on in the bedroom (sadly we have to do that now as we begin to tilt away from the sun, I really enjoy the 6am dawn) after I put my clothes on and proceeded to prepare my lunch and gather my computer for work.
Looking back now it is like: Holy Passive-Aggressive Batman! And over what? – 45 minutes of sleep. :(
It is that easy to turn off your connection to the one you love and treasure most in the world. You would think that after taking the p-sychology courses and a fairly steady diet of sociological/psychological reading one would be able to stop shit like that in its tracks.
I wish.
But back to the story, I look forward to going home, apologizing for being a doofus, and then having a nice nap to catch up on what I missed this morning.
Nap time and snuggles incoming! :)
All will be well once again. :)
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
The Arbourist
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